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Ethics and Religion
“Know this then, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of Mankind is Man.”
Alexander Pope, An essay on Man, ii 1
When we talk about environmental issues nowadays, we tend to think in purely
physical terms, rarely of what might be called the moral or ethical environment. This is
the surrounding climate of ideas on how to live – our standards of behaviour. In the eyes
of some thinkers, such as Hegel, it shapes our identities, whilst its workings can be
strangely invisible. Whether one is religious or not, there is no living without standards
of living, which means ethics
For many people, ethics is not only tied up with religion but is completely settled
by it. Such people do not need to think too much about ethics because there is an
authoritative code of instructions, a handbook of how to live. It is the word of Heaven
or the Will of a Being greater than us. “Happy are those who live under a discipline
which they accept without question, who freely obey the orders of their leaders, spiritual
or temporal, whose word is fully accepted as unbreakable law, or, who have, by their
own methods, arrived at clear and unshakeable convictions, about what to do and what
to be, that brooks no doubt. I can only say that those who rest on such comfortable beds
of dogma are victims of forms of self-induced myopia, blinkers that may make for
contentment, but not for understanding of what it is to be human.” (Isaiah Berlin)
The Old Testament God, however, is partial to some people above others, and,
above all jealous of his own pre-eminence, a strange moral obsession. He seems to have
no problem with a slave-owning society.
Plato (c. 429-377 BC) suggested that religion only gives mythical clothing to a
morality that is there to begin with. Jonathan Sachs, the Chief Rabbi, opened an article
in The Times in May 2005, with the words, “Can you be good without being religious?
Of course yes. Whoever thought otherwise? There is nothing inherently religious about
the moral sense.”
Religion is not the source of standards of behaviour but a projection of them, made
precisely in order to dress them up with an absolute authority. Epicurus said, “Religion
is what most people believe, thinking people question, and rulers find useful.” It can
certainly be the means by which unjust political authority, whether religious or secular
keeps its subjects docile. In a lighter vein, the lines in the popular hymn ‘All things
bright and beautiful’ – ‘God made the rich man in his castle and the poor man at his
gate’ – may be thought of as serving to keep the lower orders resigned to their lot.
Religion is not the foundation of ethics so much as its showcase or its symbolic
expression. Myth, in this sense, is not to be despised. It gives us examples that engage
our attention. It is the depositary for humanity’s endless attempts to struggle with death,
desire, and happiness, and good and evil.
The quintessence of the rich Judaic tradition, on which Christianity itself is based,
was given by Hillel, spiritual leader of the Jews from 30 BC to 10 AD, in these words:
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“What is hateful to you, do not do unto your neighbour; this is the entire Tora, the rest is
commentary.”
It has echoes in the Hindu Mahabharatha, “Let no man do to another that which
would be repugnant to himself”, and Confucius, “What you do not want done to
yourself, do not do to others.”
If we are good it may be because we were never tempted enough or frightened
enough or put in desperate enough need. We can also fear the restless evil in peoples’
hearts. We know that neither excess nor suffering ennobles people. In such a mood we
can be overwhelmed by the human capacity for making life horrible for others.
The right reaction is not to succumb to the mood but to reflect that the cure lies in
our own hands, but what when it doesn’t.
In the nineteenth century, when, in the West, traditional religious belief began to
lose its grip, many thinkers felt that ethics went with it. This is debatable: decreasing
Church attendance, including that in the Catholic Church, may be because many
thoughtful people are no longer comfortable in any of the traditional religions, but
continue to be moved by spirituality and the inner life of a human being, or, like Sir
Martin Rees, the astronomer and President of the Royal Society, go to church, as he
said, for cultural, aesthetic and “tribal” reasons, though he says he is an atheist.
I think of myself as a “pious agnostic”, or perhaps a “sceptical deist”, in that I
accept the probable existence of a Supreme Being, responsible for the existence of the
universe but has no influence on our daily lives.
Hinduism allows for agnosticism or at least questioning of prescribed texts: In the later
portions of the Rig Veda occur hymns such as the 129th “The Hymn of Creation” in which the
last two verses are:
Who knows for certain? – Who shall here declare it? –
Whence it was born, and whence came this creation? –
The gods were born after this world’s creation:
Then who can know from whence it has arisen? –
Wherefrom then this creation has arisen,
And whether He has or has not produced it, He who surveys it in the highest heaven,
He only knows, or even He may not.
Yet I think there is a place for faith in many people’s lives. Even Emil Zola, an
atheist, conceded this, in the final section of his novel “Lourdes”: Pierre Fremont’s
mother, an ardent Catholic, was determined that he should become a priest to make up
for the lack of faith in her late husband and elder son. In the hope that a miracle would
restore the faith that he too had lost after ordination, Pierre went to Lourdes with a
young chronic invalid, with whom he had been in love in his teens, a love which she
had reciprocated before she fell ill. Two eminent Parisian doctors had declared the girl
incurable. If she recovered, Pierre thought his faith might be restored. Her dramatic
recovery however made no difference - a young doctor friend of his, who had guessed
she had no physical illness, had predicted it even before they left for Lourdes. Pierre
reflected on the situation as they returned to Paris:
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“The existence of places of pilgrimage depends on people’s inability to live
without the dream of a sovereign Deity, establishing equality and the search for miracles
to find happiness that has eluded them in life.
When man has penetrated the depths of life’s misfortunes, he turns to the divine
illusion, which is at the root of all religious belief.
Man, weak and bare, lacks the strength to live his terrestrial misery without
the everlasting lie of paradise.
Science alone is insufficient and one has to leave a door open for the mysteries.
To subject mankind to a brutal amputation, to lop off its dream, and forcibly
deprive it of the Marvellous, which it needs to live, as much as it needs bread, would
kill it.
Will we, as a people ever have the philosophical courage to take life as it is, and
live it for its own sake, without any ideas of future rewards in a life after death?
It will take centuries, if ever, before we have a society wise enough to lead a life of
rectitude without the moral control of some cult and the solace of superhuman equality
and justice.”
So even if religious belief is no more than a comfortable or comforting delusion, it
can still be important in helping people to cope with what an unequal world throws at
them.
Rationalists have a moral code based on justice and humanity, in no sense inferior
to that common to all major religions. In theory this code can be passed on to the next
generation by example and precept. I doubt how effective this is, even when parents try,
while one wonders how many actually do. The inherent tendency in children, especially
as they enter their teens, is to rebel against their parents’ teachings, even if only to assert
their independence and growing maturity. One of my father’s friends wrote in the
autograph album, I used to keep as a child:
“We think our fathers fools so wise we grow,
Our wiser sons no doubt will also think us so.”
My late mother’s views on the benefits of a faith, any faith, are relevant in this
context. She was a devout Hindu Brahmin. After the birth of my son, the question of his
christening came up, my wife being Anglican. When asked for her opinion, my mother
replied, “Children should have basic moral instruction on principles which are common
to all major religions. They may well reject the religion as they grow up, but they will at
least have had the opportunity. If it is to be Church of England, so be it. It is better than
none, which it would be, left to you.”
Formal religious instruction tries to inculcate a moral code in the young, which one
hopes will influence their behaviour in later life, even if they lose their faith.
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Grayling, talking of his “The Good Book”, in The Sunday Times on the eve of its
publication, defined a Humanist as one who “sees that our ethics are based on our most
sympathetic understanding of human nature and the human condition.” I am however
as much concerned about the teaching of fundamentalist religious dogma as of
uncompromising atheism, which some members of the British Humanist Association
equate with Humanism.
I support humanism in its continental tradition, as any philosophy founded on
the ontological differences between humanity and the rest of nature. Entering
philosophical vocabulary by way of the studia humanitatis associated with the focus in
Renaissance studies on Classical culture, it is an attitude of mind attaching prime
importance to human beings and human values, often considered the central theme of
Renaissance civilization.
There is merit too in formal communal worship, at a time when society is
becoming increasingly fragmented and the sense of community declining. It is the
cement that glues a community together. Social services have replaced, too often only
ineffectively the traditional role of churches as centres of a community, where
newcomers to a neighbourhood can find emotional (spiritual) and, if needed, practical
support. Many churches unfortunately have inner cliques, which regard newcomers as
unwelcome intruders to be frozen out, but a good cleric would counter such tendencies.
‘Emile Durkheim, one of the founders of sociology, a grandson of an orthodox
Rabbi, spent years in the South Sea Islands, studying the natives to find out what
religion was like before it was formalised with prayer books and professional clergy.
The result was “Elementary forms of the Religious Life” published in 1912. In it he
suggested that the primary purpose of religion at its earliest level was not to put people
in touch with God but to put them in touch with each other. Religious ritual taught
people how to share with their neighbours the experiences of birth and bereavement, of
children marrying and people dying (Harold Kushner in “When bad things happen to
good people”). There were rituals for planting and for harvesting, for the winter solstice
and the vernal equinox. In this way the community would be able to share the most
joyous and the most frightening moments of life. No one would have to face them on
their own.’
‘I think that this is still what religion does best. We need to share our joy with
other people, and even more, to share our fears and our grief.’
‘The Jewish custom of sitting “Shiva”, the memorial week after death, like the
wake, grows out of this need. When we feel so terribly alone, singled out by the hand of
fate, when we are tempted to crawl away into a corner and feel sorry for ourselves, we
need to be reminded that we are part of a community, that there are people around who
care about us and that we are still part of the stream of life. There is a marvellous Jewish
ritual called “se’udat havra’ah”, the meal of replenishment. On returning from the
cemetery, the mourner is not to make food for himself, or to serve others. Other people
have to feed him or her, symbolising the way the community rallies round them to try to
fill the emptiness in their world.’
Nevertheless, as Immanuel Kant said, “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no
straight thing has ever been made”, all religion is man-made, and its teaching cannot but
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be influenced by contemporaneous prejudices and human frailty, despite claims to be
God’s Law.
I was reminded of this as I heard the Headmaster of the Emmanuel College in
Gateshead talk about religious education: he asserted his unassailable belief that the
world was created in seven days, calling it ‘Intelligent Design’. One would question the
fitness of any individual with such a closed mind to be a teacher, leave alone
headmaster. I would go as far as to say that such teaching may be one reason why many
bright young people lose a faith that does not bear scrutiny. Creation Science, which
tries to make Genesis scientifically respectable, almost certainly misses the point of the
Biblical story. ‘It was not a historical account, but a spiritual reflection upon the
ultimate significance of life itself about which science has so far had nothing to say’, as
Canon Sir John Polkinghorne, an Anglican priest, Fellow of the Royal Society, former
Cambridge Professor of Particle Physics, and winner of the Templeton Prize in 2002
said,: ‘Those who use scripture to argue for Seven-day creation and a young earth are
abusing the Bible. Genesis I and II are not divinely dictated text books of science, but
something even more interesting’ a theological account of why the world exists (“God
said, let there be….”) Religious belief is concerned with the embrace of truth, not
intellectual suicide’.
Stephen Hawking ended A Brief History of Time with: “If we do discover a
complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not
just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people,
be able to take part in discussion of why it is that we and the universe exists. If we find
the answer to that it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then, we
should truly know the mind of God.” Till such time, I am content to remain a pious
agnostic or sceptical deist, who values ethics as central to a civilised society.
R. M. Kalbag
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